Seagulls are attacking pet dogs and killed a poor tortoise in England, and here magpies are conducting mass massacres of small garden birds such as sparrows, tits and thrushes.

It's time to have more than a "conversation", as advocated by British prime minister David Cameron, about such out-of-control species - it's really time to have an official extermination programme to curb the rapacious ways of gulls and magpies.

Ironically, gulls are protected in Ireland, though there seems little evidence of a "large decline" in the population.

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